The City’s ‘Losings-Bank’: A Temperance Sermon on Economic Ruin
In an 1881 sermon at Plymouth Church, a local minister argues that Seattle’s rampant saloon culture—not market forces—is the primary engine of financial instability.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the year 1873, a money crisis, a financial panic, swept over the land. Banks broke, mercantile establishments of every kind collapsed, and railroad companies went under. That was the year that marked the stranding of your Northern Pacific, which began to float again only after eight years of exposure on the beach of bankruptcy. Now, in all fairness, candor, charity and sobriety of judgment, is there any color of fanaticism in attributing the panic and hard times almost wholly to the enormous liquor waste? For 40 millions of people, our grocer bills were roughly 700 million dollars, while 1,500 million dollars were spent on liquor—one dollar for food and nearly $2.50 for liquor. Our schools cost 95 million dollars to 1,500 million for liquor, a proportion of less than $1 to $15. See how it is: here in Seattle are three bookstores and so many liquor stores that we cannot keep count of them. The bookstores close up at night and over Sunday; the others never—like smelting furnaces, the blast is ever on. Every liquor bar is a losings-bank. A fit sign for every liquor house, saloon and barroom would be 'Bank of Losings'—all that is deposited therein is shamefully and irrevocably lost.
“See how it is: here in Seattle are three bookstores and so many liquor stores that we cannot keep count of them. The bookstores close up at night and over Sunday; the others never.”
This 1881 sermon captures the moral anxiety that preceded the Prohibition era, framing personal habits as the cause of systemic economic collapse. While today's debates focus on housing and inflation, the preacher's frustration with the proliferation of businesses (like saloons vs. bookstores) mirrors modern anxieties about how local retail landscapes and concentrated spending affect a city's social character.
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